With Seven Dollars Left, I Trusted New York's Most Feared Mafia Boss

Vincent's safe apartment was on the twenty-eighth floor of a building overlooking the East River.

I expected gold fixtures, armed men, maybe a painting that had been stolen from a museum.

Instead, the place looked almost painfully ordinary. Cream walls. Dark wood floors. A gray couch. Bookshelves lined with history books, legal journals, and several battered detective novels.

"You live here?" I asked.

"No."

"Then who does?"

"No one. That's the point."

Marco checked every room before allowing us inside.

I noticed the ritual immediately: doors, windows, closets, balcony. He moved with practiced efficiency, but something about him bothered me now that I knew he recognized David.

Maybe it was unfair. Maybe I had become suspicious of everyone.

Then again, the man I'd shared a bed with had apparently used a fake identity for two years.

Suspicion felt overdue.

Doctor Elena Ruiz arrived twenty minutes later carrying a black medical bag and the expression of a woman already disappointed in everybody present.

She was short, silver-haired, and wore red glasses on a chain around her neck.

"Vincent Moretti," she said by way of greeting. "Every time you call after midnight, I reconsider the benefits of retirement."

"It's ten forty."

"You're not helping."

Her eyes landed on me.

The irritation disappeared.

"Honey, what happened?"

I didn't realize how badly I needed someone to speak to me like a normal human being until that moment.

"Two men," I said. "A few days ago."

"Sit."

She examined my jaw, ribs, shoulder, and wrist. The rib was bruised but probably not broken. My shoulder had a strain. My wrist showed finger marks that had started turning yellow at the edges.

"You need rest," she said. "Real food. Ice. Pain medication. And if breathing gets worse, you go to a hospital no matter who complains."

She looked directly at Vincent on the last part.

"I won't complain."

"You always complain."

"Not tonight."

Doctor Ruiz glanced between us, wisely decided she did not want an explanation, and left me with medication and instructions.

After the door closed, Vincent disappeared into the kitchen.

I heard cabinets opening.

"What are you doing?"

"Finding food."

"For who?"

He looked back at me.

"The woman who told a doctor she hasn't eaten since yesterday morning."

"I had crackers."

"She said crackers don't count."

"You listened to her?"

"I'm afraid of her."

That startled a laugh out of me.

It hurt my ribs, but it was still a laugh.

Ten minutes later, I was eating tomato soup and grilled cheese at a kitchen island while New York's most feared Mafia boss stood across from me reading messages on his phone.

The absurdity finally became too much.

"Do you actually kill people?"

Vincent looked up.

Marco, standing near the window, became very interested in the skyline.

"That's a direct question."

"You haven't exactly been vague about who you are."

"No."

"So?"

His face gave me nothing.

"I've done things I'm not proud of. I've ordered things I wish I could undo. I've also spent years trying to make sure fewer people around me have to live by the rules I inherited."

It was not an answer.

It was somehow more honest than one.

I put down my spoon.

"I'm not asking because I'm curious. I'm asking because if I'm going to sleep under your roof, I need to know whether I'm safer with you than I am outside."

Vincent came around the island, but he stopped several feet away.

"I will not hurt you. I will not let anyone under my authority hurt you. And I will not ask you to participate in anything illegal."

"That last part sounds suspiciously specific."

"I'm a lawyer's nightmare. I've learned to be specific."

Marco finally smiled.

Vincent looked at him.

The smile vanished.

I finished half the soup before exhaustion hit me like a wave.

Vincent showed me a guest room. New toothbrush. Clean towels. A stack of clothes still in packaging.

"Those aren't my size."

"They were here already."

"Do all Mafia safe houses come with emergency women's sweatpants?"

"This apartment belongs to one of my companies. Executives use it when they travel."

"That's less exciting."

"Most truth is."

I should have slept.

I didn't.

At one in the morning, I found Vincent in the living room, jacket off, tie loosened, reading the threat letter under a lamp.

"You said Sebastian Vale tried to destroy your family."

He looked up.

"You should be resting."

"You said I get a vote."

"I did."

"Then answer me."

He set the letter on the coffee table.

"Vale was my father's attorney and financial adviser. He knew every legal company, every hidden partnership, every weakness. Twelve years ago, money started disappearing. Contracts collapsed. People we trusted turned against us. My father believed a rival family was behind it."

"Was he wrong?"

"Yes."

"Vale?"

Vincent's jaw tightened.

"We never proved it. But shortly after my father died, Vale vanished with records that should have belonged to us."

"How did your father die?"

His gaze drifted toward the dark window.

"Car bombing."

I swallowed.

"I'm sorry."

He gave a small nod.

"Dominic was twenty-two. I was twenty-nine. I took over before the funeral flowers died."

Suddenly the man in front of me looked less like a headline and more like someone who had been trapped by a life he did not design.

I hated myself for noticing.

"And David worked for Vale?"

"According to Dominic, yes."

"Why would a man like Vale send David to date me? I'm nobody."

Vincent's eyes sharpened.

"Stop saying that."

"What?"

"That you're nobody. You're a woman with a name, a job history, bank records, friends, a landlord, a life. Men like Vale use ordinary people because ordinary people are invisible to men who think power only lives in boardrooms and back rooms."

"You make that sound like experience."

"It is."

I wrapped my arms around myself.

"I need to know what David did."

"We will."

"No. I need to know now."

Vincent studied me for a moment.

Then he handed me a laptop.

"Start with what you remember. Every account he had access to. Every trip. Every time he asked you to sign something."

For the next two hours, I rebuilt my relationship like a crime scene.

David had always handled the utilities because he said I worked too hard. He had encouraged the joint savings account because it was "what serious couples did." He had borrowed my laptop repeatedly when his own was being repaired. He had once asked me to sign as a witness on paperwork for what he called a freelance consulting client.

"What paperwork?" Vincent asked.

"I don't know. It was almost a year ago."

"Think."

I closed my eyes.

White paper. Blue tabs. David standing at the kitchen counter. A company name at the top.

"Northstar something. Northstar Logistics?"

Vincent went still.

"Northstar Holdings?"

My eyes opened.

"Yes."

Marco turned from the window.

"That's Vale."

The room changed.

"What does that mean?"

Vincent opened another laptop and typed quickly.

"Northstar Holdings is a shell company we've connected to several Vale businesses, but it has never been directly traceable to him."

"I witnessed a signature. That's all."

"Whose signature?"

"I don't remember."

"Would your name be on the document?"

"Yes."

Marco swore softly.

Vincent looked at me.

"If that document moved money or assets and someone needs to erase the chain, your name matters."

"So David used me as a witness."

"Possibly."

"And now they want me dead because I could identify him?"

"Possibly."

I hated that word.

My email account became our next target.

David had known my password, so I assumed anything useful was gone. But at 3:17 a.m., I found a message in my spam folder from a storage company in Brooklyn.

Payment overdue.

Unit 418.

Account holder: Rowan Mercer.

I stared at the screen.

"I have never rented a storage unit."

Vincent read the email over my shoulder.

"Address?"

I showed him.

Marco already had his phone out.

"I can send a team."

"No," I said.

Both men looked at me.

"If it's in my name, I go."

Vincent's expression hardened.

"That's not smart."

"Neither was trusting David. I'm done letting other people decide what happens to my life."

"Rowan-"

"You said I get a vote."

He exhaled through his nose.

"I regret saying that."

"Too late."

At nine the next morning, after three hours of broken sleep and a breakfast I barely touched, we drove to a storage facility near the Navy Yard.

Vincent insisted on two vehicles and a private security sweep.

The manager accepted my driver's license without question. David had created the account online using my information eight months earlier.

That fact made me nauseous.

Unit 418 was small.

Inside sat one metal filing box, a backpack, and an old desk lamp.

"That's it?" I whispered.

Marco opened the filing box.

Empty.

Vincent picked up the backpack.

Inside was a burner phone, a flash drive, and an envelope with my name written across the front in David's handwriting.

My hands started shaking.

"Give it to me."

Vincent did.

I tore it open.

There was one sheet of paper.

Rowan,

If you're reading this, something went wrong. I am sorry about the money. I am sorry about the car. But if Vincent Moretti finds you, do not believe him. He will tell you I used you. He will tell you Vale is the enemy.

Neither thing is the whole truth.

The drive is insurance.

Do not let Vincent have it.

I read the note twice.

Then a sharp crack exploded through the storage unit.

Vincent slammed into me.

We hit the concrete floor as something punched through the metal door behind us.

Marco shouted.

Another crack.

A shower of sparks burst from the wall.

"Stay down!" Vincent ordered.

His body covered mine, one arm braced over my head.